The forms of Antiquity have long held great resonance in Western culture,and nowhere has this resonance undergone more distinctivemodifications or been used to greater advantage than in France. Thissession seeks to explore the impulse recurring throughout French history toresuscitate the remains of Greece and Rome. Why has the specter ofAntiquity so haunted French consciousness? What are the dimensions of thisembodiment? What are the circumstances and thecosts of this periodic resurrection?

Answering these questions may help us to understand how to consider aspectsof French writing in a more productive way. Theoretical discourse of thelate 20th and early 21st centuries has argued persuasively that pastcharacterizations of the worldâ€™s literary traditions have beenessentializing, prescriptive, and ideological in nature. Howeverinsightful these critical arguments have been, they do not remove the factthat languages and cultures are definitively marked by their genealogies.We are thinking of authors like Derrida, Kristeva, and Fanon, who identifythe inequities inherent within the French language in a way that is, incertain regards, typically â€œFrench,â€ leading us to speculate about theorigins of this irreducible flavor and to wonder: To what extent isAntiquity responsible for the Frenchness of French?

Some suggested questions for discussion are:How have the imperatives of Classicism been transgressed, and withwhat consequences?How have politics shaped appropriations of Antiquity in France?What has been the global impact of the Classically-mediated French body?What is the allure of Antiquity in the French tradition?